October 11-15, 6,200 researchers and clinicians met in Montreal for the 12th International Congress of Human Genetics. After my brain recovered from the long days of meetings, one panel discussion emerged as my favorite: what I thought was going to be a dull comparison of DNA sequencing technologies turned out to be a spirited look at Read More
Genetic Linkage
Jim Watson at International Congress of Human Genetics
October 11, 2011
Montreal, Oct. 11, 2011 -- James Watson joined a panel of “genome pioneers” at the opening session of the 12th International Congress of Human Genetics today. He was invited, besides his fame, because he was the second person to have his genome sequenced (Craig Venter was first), but his comments revealed that perhaps his most telling qualification is that he has a son who has schizophrenia. Known for his controversial views, Dr. Watson did not disappoint. Read More
23andMe's Exome Sequencing and the Tenth Edition of My Textbook
October 1, 2011
It’s been a strange week. The tenth edition of my human genetics textbook was published, just as 23andMe announced that they now offer whole exome sequencing, for $999. Read More
International Congress of Human Genetics
October 1, 2011
I will be posting from the International Congress of Human Genetics, in Montreal, starting October 11. As usual I'm part of the undergrad workshop and career night, but mostly I'll be running around learning things. I'll have my eye out for controversies and reports that the media miss ... please e-mail me (rickilewis54@gmail.com) with particular interests. You never know when you can find a clue to a rare disease in a poster or comment. Read More
Make-up: What's DNA Got To Do With It?
August 21, 2011
I couldn’t help but stare at the ad: the sleek double helix winding behind the coiled container of makeup looked eerily like the covers of my human genetics textbook and upcoming book about gene therapy, both of which have DNA as a backdrop to faces. The standard beige goo that is Revlon’s Age Defying with DNA Advantage™ cream makeup swirls symmetrically upward, resembling more a soft-serve ice cream cone before the indentations are licked away than it does the molecule of life. I decided to investigate. Read More
"Animals Containing Human Material" -- Welcome!
August 15, 2011
A new biomedical abbreviation debuted July 22, ACHM (for Animals Containing Human Material) in a report of the same name from the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. ACHM will soon replace, I hope, the phrase “humans and animals,” which implies to the taxonomically inclined that we are instead fungus, plant, or microbe. Read More
Summer Reading for Bioethicists: End-of-the-World and Death Books
July 24, 2011
Like Alvy Singer, Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall, I’m obsessed with books about the end of humanity, which sometimes involves the end of the world, and sometimes just that of Homo sapiens. Midsummer is a good time to contemplate how bioethics would come into play in such unlikely scenarios, which raise issues of utilitarianism, justice, paternalism, death and dying, and misuse of technology. Read More
"Dignity Therapy" Paper Ignores Hospice
July 10, 2011
”Dignity therapy" is a “novel psychotherapeutic approach” that gives patients with a 6-month life expectancy “an opportunity to reflect on things that matter most to them or that they would most want remembered.” In these days of medical experts such as Sarah Palin equating reimbursed end-of-life discussions to death panels killing granny, an outcomes evaluation of any such intervention is essential. Read More
Taking a Chance on Chantix
July 4, 2011
After 60+ years of smoking, my mother-in-law’s lungs were surely a toxic wasteland, yet nothing would make her quit. By the time that studies from the 1950s finally led to warning messages on cigarette packages in the 1960s, too many nicotine molecules had bombarded neuron receptors in her brain’s nucleus accumbens, for far too long. She, like millions of others, was hooked. Read More
A Medical Manual from 1909
June 22, 2011
I discovered a treasure at a thrift store. For 89 cents, I bought “The People’s Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English or Medicine Simplified,” by Dr. R. V. Pierce, head of The Invalids’ Hotel and Surgical Institute in Buffalo, New York, circa 1909. In these days of WebMD and direct-to-consumer genetic testing, this peek into medical history is quite an eye opener.
The first part of the 1,000-page tome is eerily similar to the human anatomy and physiology textbooks I co-author. Some things don’t change much. The final section unveils an astonishing natural pharmacopeia, from various barks and roots, to pulverized rabbit testicles to cure older men suffering from erectile dysfunction, or perhaps the newly-named “low T.” In between are sections that are just odd.
Chapters cover hygiene, “mother and babe,” marriage, and my personal favorite, “self abuse.” “Statistics show that insanity is frequently caused by masturbation,” admonishes Dr. P., and it can be deadly. He rails against “criminal abortion,” which is “secretly practiced by women who desire to rid themselves of the evidence of immorality, and by those in wedlock who wish to avoid the care and responsibility of rearing offspring.” And the good doctor has ideas about race that echo back to Darwin. While genetic researchers today marvel at the diverse genomes of the Koisan of Namibia, Dr. P. equates them to baboons.
The Medical Adviser is just as telling for what it omits – cancer, for example – from a time when tuberculosis (“consumption”), smallpox, and various fevers were of far more concern. It teems with terms probably not uttered in decades, and new to me: erysipelas, quinsy, scrofula, and of course spermatorrhea, about which the esteemed author obsesses (more on that soon).
The book is festooned with marvelous illustrations and page after page of testimonials. Sexism is entrenched. While names and photographs accompany the musings of women with “female weakness,” “womb trouble,” and “nervous collapse,” complaints from men with the aforementioned spermatorrhea (“seminal weakness,” aka premature ejaculation, thanks to self abuse) are identified only by case numbers.
I think Dr. P. could have used a female co-author. Read More
The first part of the 1,000-page tome is eerily similar to the human anatomy and physiology textbooks I co-author. Some things don’t change much. The final section unveils an astonishing natural pharmacopeia, from various barks and roots, to pulverized rabbit testicles to cure older men suffering from erectile dysfunction, or perhaps the newly-named “low T.” In between are sections that are just odd.
Chapters cover hygiene, “mother and babe,” marriage, and my personal favorite, “self abuse.” “Statistics show that insanity is frequently caused by masturbation,” admonishes Dr. P., and it can be deadly. He rails against “criminal abortion,” which is “secretly practiced by women who desire to rid themselves of the evidence of immorality, and by those in wedlock who wish to avoid the care and responsibility of rearing offspring.” And the good doctor has ideas about race that echo back to Darwin. While genetic researchers today marvel at the diverse genomes of the Koisan of Namibia, Dr. P. equates them to baboons.
The Medical Adviser is just as telling for what it omits – cancer, for example – from a time when tuberculosis (“consumption”), smallpox, and various fevers were of far more concern. It teems with terms probably not uttered in decades, and new to me: erysipelas, quinsy, scrofula, and of course spermatorrhea, about which the esteemed author obsesses (more on that soon).
The book is festooned with marvelous illustrations and page after page of testimonials. Sexism is entrenched. While names and photographs accompany the musings of women with “female weakness,” “womb trouble,” and “nervous collapse,” complaints from men with the aforementioned spermatorrhea (“seminal weakness,” aka premature ejaculation, thanks to self abuse) are identified only by case numbers.
I think Dr. P. could have used a female co-author. Read More